Tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET the No. 1 seed in the East, the Indiana Pacers, must figure out a way to brush off the final month and a half of the regular season and kick their offense into high gear. They will begin Round 1 of the postseason against the No. 8 seed Atlanta Hawks on ESPN and likely can't afford to drop a game at home. Live stream the matchup free by clicking this link; Hawks fans can find the game on Sports 92.9 The Game, while Pacers fans can find the action on 1070 The Fan.
Indiana's puzzling decline has been the talk of the league for the past month, but head coach Frank Vogel is portraying calm in the eye of the storm. "I think we're a confident group," Vogel said Friday. "We all know we've struggled a little, but we're excited about the playoffs and we're excited to get started."
Paul George is the man people come to see in Indiana, but the key to the Pacers' offense clicking again is center Roy Hibbert. He's averaged 8.6 points and 4.3 rebounds per game since the beginning of March, a span of 24 games, and the Pacers offense has cratered in that time. They've also struggled to rebound with Hibbert on the floor, a sentence that shouldn't be true of a man who stands 7-foot-2.
"I've been doing this for six years now and it's playoff time," Hibbert said after a recent practice, indicating that's all behind him. "I'm ready to roll."
Even as he's struggled to score and rebound, his rim protection hasn't suffered. Hibbert is a force in controlling journeys to the basket, so Hawks shooting guard Kyle Korver knows his production will be huge. "They have a lot of length down low, so you have to be able to shoot," Korver said.
"If you don't knock down shots, you're not going to beat this team."
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